Archive for May, 2011

Ugh, it’s Memorial Day. I’m one of those people who for four generations at least have zero experience at war. I was too young or old to be in any Gulf War. My dad was 5 when WWII started so too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. And his father traipsed across Europe under a fake name (would my life have been different if I kept it – “Greenberg”?) to avoid the front lines of whatever war he was avoiding. Who wants to be dead?

I just self-published a book. “How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive”. I published it in paperback form, kindle, and free PDF (see directions below to get free PDF). The entire process took me three weeks. Using an established publisher would’ve taken over a year. [Important note:Since this post was written I have also self-published a new book, “I Was Blind But Now I See”. I describe what’s different about that book and also offer a special promotion for it here.] The below book is also free on Amazon Kindle for Amazon Prime members (and $1.99 otherwise).

Every night at about 2 or 3 in the morning I wake up in enormous pain. The pain gets worse every day. This has happened for about two years. It’s a straight line of pain that goes from one side of my stomach to the other.

Sometimes the pain is so great I can’t sleep unless I walk around for about twenty minutes. Sometimes I just stay up and start my day. Which means I have to go to sleep around 7 or 8pm to get a good night’s sleep. Which is critically important to me.

I had 2000 words written for a post this morning and my computer crashed and like the most base, worst, amateur, I didn’t have the file saved and I didn’t have any auto-save.

I was up at 3am today, I finished my reading (Miranda July, Charles Bukowski, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Ames, ) and coffee by about 4am and then I began writing the infamous 2000 words. I listened to Scala’s “Don’t Break My Heart” the entire time I was writing (oh, one break to listen to “The Saturdays” singing “I Just Can’t Get Enough”. I’m a sucker for covers and I listen to stuff over and over.)

I’m on a news diet. News is bad for your mental sanity. It makes me depressed. Someone is always dying. There’s always misery and pain someplace. And its usually vicarious, like, “there but for the grace of god go I”, on every cover. Its not like the news is lies. Its reality, spread out like a pornography shoot.